Mother and the Glass Ceiling

Dad always wanted to be in business for himself. In May 1925 he took the plunge and bought a bankrupt shoe store in Woodlawn, Pennsylvania and changed its name from Economy Shoe Store to Jackson’s Shoe Store. Uncle Morris became his partner and soon hard work and good business sense turned Jackson’s Shoe Store into the busiest shoe store in town. Dad needed help; he asked Mother to come work at the store. She didn’t have to go with him when he opened the store at 6 a.m. but after she had tended to the maid and Evy and me, she could go down late morning. Mother enjoyed the work, liked waiting on women customers, found the work preferable to being a stay-at-home mom whose other times out of the apartment were for bridge parties, visiting her sister, Mollie, or going to Kaufmann’s in Pittsburgh to shop.

At the end of her first week at work when Uncle Morris handed out pay checks, Mother asked for hers. He snapped, “Family doesn’t get paid.”

Mother let him know how she felt about that; “I work here, you pay me.” She had been so valuable as a saleslady, they knew they couldn’t afford to lose her. They paid her.

That was not the first time Mother had asserted herself. When she and Dad were courting, she decided she wanted to marry him. As she tells it, when the family was together, she gave them the news. They refused to hear of it: no, he was not the one for her. He was a greenhorn—a derogatory term for immigrants who had not become “Americans”—he couldn’t speak good English. He was not good enough for her.

As she tells it, she rose to her feet and made it clear, “I am going to marry him and you are going to give me a wedding!” And she married him and they gave her the wedding.

In the shoe store Mother’s skills blossomed. She connected well with her women customers. They wanted shoes to make their feet look small but that made their feet hurt. She persuaded them to buy stylish shoes in sizes a little longer but a little narrower that would be comfortable and still not look too long. She took correspondence courses from Dr. Scholl to learn how to fit arch supports, the precursor of today’s orthotics. She convinced the store to offer dyeing fabric shoes so young women could have shoes that matched their gowns without the expense of buying new shoes. She contacted dance teachers in town to announce that Jackson’s would order Capezio ballet slippers for their students. And she went with Dad to shoe shows to help him select shoe styles for each coming season’s inventory.

 Mother, the first and maybe the only feminist in the family, knew her worth long before the cry, “Equal pay for equal work.” I don’t think Mother wanted to start a campaign to push for women’s rights; she was just claiming rights for herself. She showed she had skills beyond being a wife and mother and baleboste (an excellent homemaker) and could enter a man’s world and do as well as any of them. She wanted to be recognized for her ability and wanted to be paid as well. True, Aunt Jennie, her sister, worked with Uncle Lou in their variety store, and if the jewelry store Aunt Sarah and Uncle Herman owned was open, Aunt Sarah could always be seen there. I don’t think either wife was on the payroll.

I asked Bea Miler if her mother, Aunt Sarah, was a paid employee. She answered, “Good question. I don't think so, but couldn't swear to it. I never got paid for cleaning the silver, stamping wallets, putting stock away, taking payments at the window (credit jewelers), or taking repairs into Pittsburgh twice a week in the summer, Saturdays in school months. It's one of those questions you don't think of until there's no one left to answer it.”

Mother made her way in a family controlled by men by meeting the challenge head on. She demanded her place in the family and business world and proved she could compete with the best of them. I admire her.